Ultima X: Odyssey Developer Diary

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By Andrew Burnes

The latest Ultima X: Odyssey developer diary is now available to read over on GameSpy:

When you create your character, you'll choose one of four "paths" (Blade, Arcane, Nature, and Balance). Each path has a list of abilities associated with it, broken into three groups called "disciplines." Disciplines are similar to what most games call classes, except that they are grouped into the four paths. Once you choose a path, you'll have access to any ability in any discipline within that path. Path of the Arcane, for example, includes tinker, sorcerer, and mage disciplines. Each discipline has 18 abilities associated with it, which gives you access to a total of 54 abilities. As you earn ability points, you'll be able to choose abilities from any of those three disciplines.

Initially, our abilities were organized in a tree structure. Skill trees are a very common design used in many RPG games, but they really haven't evolved much. One of the big shortcomings with skill trees is that in order to learn a skill you really like, you may be forced to learn a skill you don't want. So if the prerequisite for "WarQuake" was "Rage," you're given no choice but to learn Rage if you want to eventually learn WarQuake. You may wind up with a character boasting 20 skills, only seven of which you really like. This lowers the amount of choices available to you, as well as creates a likelihood that any character who wants that top-level skill is going to have exactly the same skills profile that you do. To alleviate this and encourage more real customization, we changed the tree structure into a "tier" structure.